I live in Japan. I have bank accounts in Japan to get a monthly income and make regular payments. Besides, I have bank accounts in the United States and Hong Kong to put some of my money into different banks in different places with different currencies to minimize the risk. I manage my assets in these countries because there are more options for investment than in Japan.
A
consideration is how to transfer the money you get in Japan to a foreign bank
account. Wire transfer at a banking institute in Japan costs very much. I tried
some online international money transfer services. All of these services require
no less than 2,000 JPY of fee per transaction, so sending tens of thousand Yen
with these services is costly.
Having
two Paypal accounts can resolve this problem. I got two Paypal accounts with my
different email addresses and linked one of the Paypal accounts to a debit card
of the bank account in Japan and the other to the bank account in the US. When
money was credited to the Japan bank account, I logged in to the Paypal account
linked to the debit card and sent money with the debit card to the Paypal
account linked to the US bank account. Then I logged out and logged in to the
other Paypal account, and I withdrew money credited to the account to the US
bank account linked to the Paypal account. The fee is cheaper as long as you send
a small amount of money. However, you cannot send money from Japan to Hong Kong
because if you live in Japan, your Paypal account does not allow you to link to
any bank accounts in Hong Kong.
I think it’s too late to write this entry, but I visited Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Maine in this September. I watched a musical play Carousel at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School performed by its musical club a few weeks before. Carousel is a musical that features a love story of a young girl and a barker in Maine, filmed in 1956. That inspired me to visit this state and, if I could, eat some lobsters and clambakes.
There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Maine, so I chose flights from Tokyo (Narita) to New York (JFK), and from LaGuardia to Portland (Maine’s largest city). All flights were Delta Airlines.
The flight to JFK was noisy by Chinese passengers around my seat chatting all the time. A middle-aged Chinese woman next to me even talked to me in Chinese though I didn’t understand it. She was too helpful to me, lending a neck pillow to me and even giving me some local sweets (I couldn’t eat it because I didn’t know what was contained).
JFK Airport was busy, and there were long lines in front of the immigration. It took almost an hour to pass the immigration counter. I expected a free WiFi service in the building, but all hotspots were encrypted and payment was needed to get passwords to access to them. So I was IP-unreachabel until I had a new SIM card activated at Hudson News of that terminal. There were no vending machines of AT&T’s pay-as-you-go smartphone in that terminal.
I had to take a shuttle bus to LaGuardia Airport. I had to wait for a long time to get in the bus because busy traffic around JFK delayed its arrival at that terminal I was in. After I waited for more than 30 minutes, the bus managed to arrive. It took me to LaGuardia Airport, and let me off at the terminal B while I had to check in at the terminal C, so I had to walk thousands of feet on the walkway to the terminal C dragging my suitcase.
Thank God I managed to get to the boarding gate without missing the flight to Portland because it was delayed about one hour.
I had dinner within the food court of LaGuardia Airport. It was a combo of roasted beef sandwiches, a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder and a glass of white wine, costing about $50 including a tip.
After dinner, I bought Barrons at a local newsstand and got to the gate C12, where the next flight was supposed to be ready. Actually it wasn’t ready when I arrived, because the aircraft was so delayed that it didn’t arrive yet.
When the gate was ready, the staff told us that the aircraft was too small for our carry-on baggage to get inside the cabin. He gave each of us a baggage claim tag and put the same-numbered one to the corresponding baggage. He told us to leave our baggage on the shelf in front of the ramp before getting on the plane.
It took about one hour from New York to Portland, Maine. Getting off the plane, the passengers who had left their baggage were told to wait in the boarding bridge in front of the door to pick their baggage up, instead of picking it up at the baggage claim area.
It was 50 degrees outside. I felt it was much colder than New York and Tokyo. I took a taxi cab to take me to the motel. It was already midnight when I got there.
Day 2: Boothbay Harbor, ME
It was the video that I recorded next morning the motel where I stayed. It was very refreshing for me even to eat breakfast at such a standard American motel.
I walked 3/4 mile to the rental car office by the airport to check out a car I had made a reservation. I wanted to go to Boothbay Harbor, about 30 miles away from Portland, where I heard that Carousel was filmed.
It was a minivan that was assigned to me as a rental car. It was Nissan’s Quest, a bit larger and more difficult for me to drive as I usually drive a small car in wrong side of the road ;-p The maneuver of the car was a bit confusing because driver’s seat was on the left, a steering wheel was on the left, a gear stick on the right of me, a rear-view mirror on the right of me, and everything but the gas pedal and the brake pedal was on the opposite side to what was in a car I drove in Japan.
Driving in the US was a bit confusing, but it wasn’t so difficult. It was not so exciting as I expected, as roads in Maine weren’t so wider than normal country roads in Japan and I didn’t think it was quite different from that in Japan except that I was driving in the opposite side of the road.
It took about an hour from Portland to Boothbay Harbor, driving US1. Here are some pictures and videos of Boothbay Harbor.
I ate lobster rolls and steamed live lobsters at Shannon’s Unshelled and Boothbay Lobster Wharf.
That’s Carousel Marina, named after the musical film Carousel.
And this is Carousel Music Theater near that downtown Boothbay Harbor, where a musical troupe performs a show along with dinner. Actors and actresses of the troupe are waiters and waitresses as well, and they serve dishes for visitors as well as sing Hello Dolly‘s numbers and other oldies songs on stage.
Backyard is a footpath around Penny Lake.
Day 3: Portland, ME
Next day I walked around downtown Portland.
A guided tour with a boat was available at a wharf. I paid $24 to apply for a 90-minute lighthouse tour.
That’s Berlin Wall.
There was a restaurant at the wharf.
It’s fried clams. It wasn’t so nice though….
Day 4: Portland, ME to Detroit, MI, Seattle, WA, and Tokyo
I flew back from Portland to Tokyo via Detroit, MI, and Seattle, WA.
The more we headed to the west, the more I felt there were Japanese and other Asian people around us. In Detroit, there were signs written in English and Japanese. I don’t know why there were Japanese, and no other foreign languages in the signs.
In Seattle, I saw many Japanese tourists walking in the concourse, while I saw very few foreign people in Maine (99% of people in Maine I saw were Caucasian Americans!). I realized that the West Coast is the gateway to Japan!
I expected Microsoft Store or something like that in Seattle Tacoma Airport as Seattle is home to Microsoft, but there were no such stores in the concourse. Maybe American airports were not willing to sell local products. I didn’t find any local bourbon whiskeys in duty free shops, where they sold normal alcohols sold in standard international airports.
The departure information for the flight to Tokyo didn’t appear in the display, so passengers for that flight couldn’t get any terminal information of it. I didn’t know why.
I managed to get to the terminal S8 where the flight to Tokyo were going to depart, as I had TripIt in my smartphone and updated flight information came into it.
Actually I wasn’t so interested in cosmetics or expensive liquors sold in duty free shops, but I wanted to get American sweets, drugs and commodities sold in Hudson News. I bought them as many things as I could, because Seattle was the last stop and it was the last chance to get them in that country. I paid almost $100 there for candies, pain relievers, handy wet wipes, travel goods and more. I think I spent too much money.
I got iPhone5. I kept Sony’s Xperia Android phone, but the iPhone is easier for me to use, with a wider variety of accessories sold all over the world than Sony. I haven’t got any Softbank’s nano-SIM card, so I went to the nearest DoCoMo shop to get a DoCoMo nano-SIM card for it, but they didn’t have any. I visited some other DoCoMo shops to ask for one, but none of them had it. Without a nano-SIM card, it couldn’t be activated, and it was just a small plate.
A DoCoMo shop in Tochigi-shi thankfully said they had a nano-SIM card for iPhone5, although most DoCoMo shops in Tokyo said they didn’t have any. When I drove to the shop, there were dozens of people waiting in the queue. A shop clerk said I should wait for one hour and a half to be served, but I actually waited 30 mins or so before being served. I managed to get one, put it into my iPhone I had bought before and had it successfully activated.
I’m going to Hong Kong tonight. I last visited there six years ago. I’ll be back in Japan on Sunday 6th.
Action items in Hong Kong: to get SIM-lock-free iPad2 and, if possible, iPhone4S at Mong Kok; registration of new address and passport number for my account of HSBC; and sightseeing at Stanley, Aberdeen, and Lamma Island.
I bought Blackberry Curve 9300 in the middle of June for my main mobile phone I’m using daily and switched an account from b-mobile into NTT DoCoMo again by the Mobile Number Portability service. The b-mobile SIM card was what I got together with an iPhone 4 Hong Kong version. Still, the iPhone 4 was not so good for a telephone because its voice quality was not satisfactory and the manoeuvre was a little bit complicating. It’s just for web browsing, taking pictures and motion videos, playing games, and other utilities, not for talking. I think the best device for voice calls is that of Nokia, but Nokia doesn’t sell any mobile phones in Japan any longer. Out of the phones available in Japan, Blackberry is for me. That’s why I’ve got Blackberry again.
Another reason why I chose Blackberry again is that it has a real QWERTY keyboard on the device, not displayed on the screen. You can type the keyboard to enter text, and doing this is much easier than touching the virtual keyboard on the screen. So I’m gonna use it for text messaging and email writing besides talking on it. Text messaging will be much more convenient because sending SMS to other carriers will be available next Wednesday.
Although the iPhone is not so good for a telephone, it’s best for a camera and a communicator with plenty of applications. I’ve got a Softbank SIM card too, so I still use iPhone4 used so far on the main basis with the Softbank SIM card inserted in it.
Now I’ve got three mobile phones carried with me —- Blackberry Curve 9300, iPhone 4, and a mobile phone, my employer, tells me to keep. Next, I want to have some tablets like iPad or Galaxy Tab 😉
Sorry for not updating the blog for a long time. These days I’m hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, rather than writing blog entries. Please visit my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/masayuki.kawagishi or follow @_Yuki_K_ on Twitter 😉
I see that the world of mobile phones is rapidly changing for years. Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers, is disappearing, and Apple is expanding the market with the iPhone, its flagship mobile phones with a music player, games, and other applications all-in-one. Following apple, various mobile phone manufacturers, from Samsung to small makers in China, are releasing smartphones with the Android operating system developed by Google.
In Japan, I think that mobile phones are rapidly “globalised” in recent years. A few years ago all you could see here was the “Galapagos” handphones sold only within Japan and unavailable once you brought them out of Japan. But recently on the train or the streets, you see the same devices as those seen in the rest of the world — iPhones, Android smartphones, and even Blackberry phones (scarce though).
More than that, this month I had good news showing Japan’s globalisation of the mobile phone environment. News says that from 13 July this year you can send text messages (SMS) to the mobile phones of the different carriers from yours. That is normal in the rest of the world, but that isn’t here in Japan — if you have a mobile phone sold by NTT DoCoMo, you can send SMS only to NTT DoCoMo users, not to au, Softbank, or any other carrier’s users. As the SMS gateways are closed to different carriers, you can rarely see here such services as balance enquiry, network configurations, service registrations, and purchasing something by sending text messages to service providers as you can see in Singapore, Hong Kong or some European countries. The opening of the SMS gateways will probably enable you to have such services even in Japan soon.
Japan and the countries other than Japan don’t stand in the opposite. Japan is an extension of other countries, and any country is an extension of Japan. Anything available in the world must be available in Japan too.
I had used Nokia N82 with Softbank Mobile’s SIM card as a main mobile phone so far. I had told my friends the phone number of it. But it had been kind of inconvenient because it had had narrower signal reception areas than the mobiles of NTT DoCoMo so if you had gone underground or deep into a big building you couldn’t have had it communicated. More than that, (it’s the situation peculiar to Japan, though) you can send SMS only to the mobiles of the same carrier as yours. Most of my friends had NTT DoCoMo mobile phones, so I’d wanted to change the carrier of my handphone into NTT DoCoMo.
NTT DoCoMo had released Samsung’s Galaxy S handphones in November, and they had been lovely for me, but they had been in such a short supply in those days that I couldn’t have got any. I’d given up waiting for one.
At that time, Japan Communications had begun releasing b-mobile’s micro-SIM cards together with unlocked iPhone4 imported from Hong Kong. JC had been selling the imported iPhone4 to its customers on hire purchase. JC was providing mobile phone service using NTT DoCoMo’s network, so if you had a mobile with b-mobile’s SIM card installed you could use it in almost the same manner as NTT DoCoMo, including sending and receiving SMS to and from NTT DoCoMo’s phones.
That’s why I purchased b-mobile’s micro-SIM card called “b-micro talkingSIM” and iPhone4. Before the purchase, I had cancelled the contract with Softbank Mobile and had the phone number used in it reassigned to the new micro SIM card so that I could use the same phone number as that I had told my friends.
I purchased a prepaid SIM card with 3-day broadband service at the M1 counter in Changi Airport. Unlike normal mobile phones like Nokia, iPhone didn’t receive an APN or other network setting information needed for internet access. The M1 counter lady said I needed to bring the iPhone to the M1 shop at Paragon and have it installed settings there.
I asked the MRT station staff where I could get to Paragon, and she answered I should go to Orchard station, so I took the MRT train to Orchard.
Here’s Paragon. It was huge.
M1 shop was on the B1 level. When I waited in line in front of the shop, a shop-girl came to me and asked what she could help me. I told her I wanted to activate internet service for my iPhone. Then she led me to the front of counters in charge of activation or other services and gave me a paper printed a queue number to let me wait until the number was called. Tens of minutes later, I was called by a counter girl. The activation took a little more time because my iPhone hadn’t been purchased at the M1 shop but in Hong Kong. Anyway, the activation was successful, and I could have access to the internet with my iPhone.
After activation, I went to Little India.
There were dozens of gold jewellery shops on the streets selling golden stuff and buying items with gold. I wonder if there are many such stores in Asian cities.
There were plenty of Indian restaurants as well. Below is one of the local restaurants. People were eating foods put on a banana leaf by hand, as people in India do.
Because Singapore is very close to the Equator and today was the almost autumnal equinox, the Sun passes the top of the sky. This video is when the Sun was on the top at solar noon. Vertical sunshine can never be experienced in Japan.
